Why small countries will always lead in FTTH

Strategically Blogging

Recently, we had the DOE R&D conference in San Francisco. As always, it was a great event as the key industry players and decision makers came under one roof. I wanted to share some of my highlights and experiences from the event. Before that, one of the treats for me was looking at the new Bay Bridge from the shores of Treasure Island. Though I am a Bay Area resident, I regret that I hadn’t done this before—I usually just drive through it. The Bay Bridge looked magnificent, as it wore jewels of LED lights. The directionality of the lights was brilliant and it limited light spillage into the bay. So thank you, DOE, for allowing me this experience.

LG Chem came out this week claiming to have the world’s highest OLED lumen-price ratio at 5 lm/$, but what does this really mean, and how does it compare to traditional and LED lighting?

To really see how this ground breaking development in OLED lighting compares, I have listed below the average selling prices (ASPs) for the general lighting luminaire form factors that Strategies Unlimited believes OLEDs can potentially penetrate: downlights, troffers, and suspended pendants (we do not believe OLEDs will play in track lighting, high bay, or street lighting due to current lumen output, efficacy, and price).

We have now released our latest market research report, The World Market for COB LEDs in General Lighting, which covers the market for LED COBs and Multichip Array COBs. We forecast the overall market for these COBs will grow significantly to $4.35 billion in 2020 from $1.54 billion in 2014. In addition, the report indicates that the market will grow by 40% YoY in 2015. The long term growth is mainly due to the increased penetration of COB luminaires and lamps into some specific lighting applications, such as downlights and spotlights. With better light distribution and design flexibility, we expect a significant growth for COB, especially in directional lighting applications.

At the 2014 Strategies in Light Europe conference, there was one recurring theme that I thought was very interesting: evolution vs. revolution. I think it is very important for people in the lighting industry to understand that LEDs in themselves are not a revolutionary (disruptive) technology that is changing the industry, but rather a natural evolutionary progression of light emitting materials/methods to create usable light. As presented by Dr. Thomas Knoop, the Managing Director of INTEGRATED, a technology is disruptive in an industry when it attacks the market by offering a different value driver (usually convenience or price) and not when it just fulfills the need of the average customer. The two charts provided below are visualizations of these ideas.

As the year 2014 recently ended, I thought now would be a good time to review what the lighting industry has gone through along with what lighting trends we anticipate in the near future. 2014 was an amazing year for LED lighting. Here a few recent key things that LED lighting experienced in 2014:

Why small countries will always lead in FTTH

By Tom Hausken

This just out today: the FTTH Council Europe
reported the European countries with top FTTH penetration. The list is revealing, with Andorra
at number 4. Number 4! This means that once again we have to put up with articles asking why the U.S. is lagging tiny Andorra in FTTH penetration.

The council announced that the top 10 countries with more than 10% penetration are: Sweden, Norway, Slovenia, Andorra, Denmark, Iceland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Slovakia, and Finland. Note that the top country, Sweden, only has about 9 million people. Andorra has about 84,000.

Other lists of this type have put countries like Singapore, South Korea, and Iceland at the top of lists of countries with high broadband or FTTH penetration. In the next breath, a policy wonk somewhere will claim that this shows that the U.S. is falling behind these up-and-coming countries. For example, here's a policy report
from 2006 doing just that. The U.S. trends toward the OECD average over time as smaller countries fill out the bell curve, but that's ignored. Rather, it's spun as a call for action.

Moreover, any student of politics knows that countries like Sweden, Singapore, and South Korea are more inclined to adopt centralized public policies than the U.S. In the U.S., the Administration, Congress, FCC, the courts, each of 50 states, and even municipalities make telecom policy. Some of the municipalities are like Andorra, to be sure, but the overall patchwork is far from centralized, thanks to things like the Bill of Rights and the general Wild West temperament of U.S. public policy.

Policies encouraging substantial investment in FTTH may be a great thing for the U.S. I'm of the view that it's a lot more complicated than that. But whatever your view, please don't say that the U.S. is falling behind because tiny Andorra has greater penetration than the U.S.